Laptop GPS World

What is different between 2006 and 2009. I purchased 2007, installed and tried it. I drive in large motorhome and using 07 I located a campground on the screen and then located same by using the actual street address. The two locations were almost 30 miles apart. I printed the screen and sent it to Microsoft and then thru out 2007 and went back to 2006. Is 2009 better?

Basing your buying decisions on one campsite is not a very good practice. What is generally updated is the roads. Individual types of POIs (points of interest) may or may not be better from one version to the next. Although there may be more POIs, they might not be the ones you are interested in.

Your best bet would to download the trial version and see if it meets your needs.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...DisplayLang=en

Terry

I also travel in a RV and use Street's to trip plan and for real time driving instructions. I have found a few locations that are not spot on, but for the most part, the locations in the program are not too bad. Regardless, I have found it to be more effective to build my own database of campgrounds located by latitude/longitude.

Hi ktrack,

I do something similar with gas stops. I make it a point to use Gas Bars (eg. SuperStore, Extra Foods, Real Cdn Warehouse) when travelling in western Canada. I look up their locations online for their addresses and use the addresses to get an initial location. That usually gets me close enough that I can get a visual on the store. When I get to the actual location I change the waypoint to have the actual GPS lat/long reading. I have nearly three dozen of them in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia with the actual locations from my own usage now.

I have created actual waypoints for the motels and restaurants that we liked, in case we get back that way again. And I have quite a collection of actual waypoints for golf courses.

If I want to be pretty sure of the location of something in advance I use Google Maps. You can't fool a satellite photo! It's pretty easy to verify the actual location of things like large stores, RV parks, hotels (and golf courses!) in a satellite image. I was even able to use Google Maps satellite images to verify the location of a friend's place (.8 acre lot) on Vancouver Island for a trip last month. The address he gave me wasn't searchable in any of the many GPS maps I have. I could only get the nearest intersection.

If you go to the web site of pretty much any hotel, bed&breakfast or RV park they will have a page that describes their location. It usually has the address but will normally also include a nearby intersection or other descriptive terms like "across the road from the Casino" or other similar large and obvious landmark. There is nearly always something descriptive enough to help find it in Google Maps' satellite images.

When I've located what I want in Google Maps I manually create a waypoint with the lat/long from the screen. Even though the calibration of Google's satellite images can sometimes be as much as 1/2 mile off, it's always been close enough for me to get a visual.

There are so many good tools out there for trip planning ... an embarrassment of riches.

...ken...

"an embarrassment of riches" maybe it is just me, but I want to be a Midas when I am traveling in approx. 60 feet of vehicle that is 13 feet high and 102 inches wide on roads and areas I have not been to before. Call me greedy!

Hey ktrack, you should change your handle to The Philosopher Trucker.

...ken...

User name change requests can be made by contacting the administrator.

__________________
Marvin Hlavac

Laptop GPS software reviews | Stores offering discounts to our members: Semsons & Co. Inc. and Deluo Electronics

Could you check and see if the handle "Greedy" is already taken?

...ken...

I reserved that one for myself, Ken .

But to bring this back on topic, I'd suggest to monty5 not to judge a product by one or two errors on the map. Over all every single new version of Streets & Trips has been an improvement in my personal experience. Many users may disagree, and they may have very good reasons, but a single map error is not something that would make me uninstall S&T 2007 and go back to S&T 2006 .

As Terry suggested, give version 2009 a try. Hopefully it will meet your needs. Let us know.

Again, the download link and more info can be found at: Review: Microsoft Streets and Trips 2009

And to Laptop GPS World, monty5!

__________________
Marvin Hlavac

Laptop GPS software reviews | Stores offering discounts to our members: Semsons & Co. Inc. and Deluo Electronics